(Kyiv) In 2013, he surprisingly beat the great Roger Federer at Wimbledon. Today, the former tennis player Sergiy Stakhovsky patrols with fatigues and Kalashnikov in Kyiv, which he will protect “to the end” against the Russian armada.

His slender silhouette has not changed for almost nine years and that summer evening when the world discovered him, 116^and world player lying on the London lawn, fists clenched and amazed look.

He had just created one of the greatest sensations in the history of the tournament, leaving defending champion and arch-favorite Federer.

But the outfit has nothing to do with it: on Maidan Square, in the center of Kyiv at war, Sergiy Stakhovsky, 36, walks these days his 1.93 meters, his childish face, his gentle gaze and his light blue eyes in beige camo fatigues, weighted with a Kalashnikov and a gun in his belt.

“I’m not very comfortable with a gun, and I don’t know how I would react if I had to kill someone,” he says in perfect English. “I wish I never had to worry about that sort of thing.”

It’s been a little over two weeks since he returned to Ukraine and enlisted in the territorial brigades, these volunteers responsible for helping the army counter the Russian invasion launched on February 24.

And the Ukrainians “hold on”, he assures, while the Russian fire approaches the center of Kyiv, each day a little more tense.

But he does not regret anything: “I knew I had to go”.

Heartbreaker

The day before the invasion, Sergyi Stakhovsky, a young retiree who had hung up his rackets in January at the Australian Open, was on vacation in Dubai with his wife and their three children aged 4, 6 and 8.

The next morning, seeing his country plunged into war on television, he is overwhelmed by a mixture of “despair”, “uncertainty” and “helplessness”. Much of his family is in Ukraine, and “we had no idea how many bombs the Russians were dropping”.

He spends the next three days gathering information to get people to safety, in a trance. “Full of adrenaline”, he sleeps “three or four hours” in total, and eats “nothing more”.

He is going to leave, announcing it to his wife who, “at first, didn’t want to hear anything”. Then “she understood that I really couldn’t do otherwise”.

The decision is a heartbreak that undermines him as soon as he thinks of his family.

“Leaving my children is not something I’m proud of,” he explains, his throat tight. “They don’t know I’m here, because I want to leave them out of it. But I told them that I would come back quickly, and it’s already been 15 days now… And God knows how many more there will be”.

Like all Ukrainian citizens aged 18 to 60, Sergyi Stakhovsky can be mobilized and cannot leave his country as long as it is at war. He says he finds the strength to hold on in that of his compatriots, whom he has seen enlist “by the thousands” and whose “solidarity” he unconditionally praises. “We have no choice,” he insists, because “if we don’t resist, we no longer have a country to live in”.

From Federer to Djokovic

He makes two foot patrols a day in the center of Kyiv to thwart possible infiltrations, in particular near the building of the presidency of Volodymyr Zelensky, hero of the resistance against Moscow. “I only patrol”, but he “knows what he is doing” and maneuvers “with remarkable courage”.

The former tennis player thanks all those who, “from India to South America”, have sent him “thousands of messages of support” and support him in his various initiatives for the victims of the conflict.

Among them, “hundreds” of professional tennis players, who have not forgotten that Sergiy Stakhovsky, 31^and at the height of his career, was one of their spokespersons on the circuit.

The greatest too, starting with Roger Federer. “He told me that he wanted peace to return quickly” and that he was trying with his foundation “to help Ukrainian children” at home or in Switzerland.

The message that touched him the most was that of the world number one, the Serbian Novak Djokovic, “because he lived (the war) when he was little, and knows exactly what our children are going through”, underlines Sergiy Stakhovsky.

These days, the bombings are intensifying in Kyiv, after having already wreaked havoc in cities such as Kharkiv or Mariupol. “It’s worrying,” he said, “because over there, the Russians don’t give a damn about shooting soldiers or children.”